Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon R9 M395X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M395X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 723 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M395X		125 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7970 should in theory be much faster than the Radeon R9 M395X in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M395X		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 104000 (65%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be quite a bit (about 28%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M395X. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M395X		92544 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25856 (28%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 will be a lot (approximately 28%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R9 M395X, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M395X		23136 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6464 (28%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.